Long run speaker interconnects.

Caution about the long interconnects suggestion by Jimbo...
Long runs of RCA can cause problems. RCA is not optimized to run long lengths and at those distances can start acting as a big antenna. Speaker cables do this also, but the noise levels inducted are rarely a problem (though they can be audible and smear small details).
This noise CAN cause problems with a power amp. Amplifiers, particularly wide bandwidth designs, amplify everything fed into it...good or bad. In the worse case, the noise can cause instability in the amp (this happened to a customer of mine with a Threshold...he blew the amp). This is why balanced connectors are the de-facto standard in pro...they reject noise. Also at 50 feet, the capacitance of the cable can become a problem and you can end up with a badly rolled off high frequency if you use the wrong cable or your preamp isn't capable of driving long lengths (many aren't).

Also, if you are to run the speaker cables in the wall, make ABSOLUTELY sure they are CL-3 rated for insurance purposes! I can't stress this enough!

I've had good luck with the Wireworld speaker cables over long runs. Their symmetrical coax design rejects noise very well and they are CL-3 rated.

Regards,
Kevin Enderle
The Sound Broker

Have you considered running long interconnects from the pre to an amp much nearer to the main pair of speakers, then short(er) speaker wires to the main pair? If you have to then run extra-long speaker wires to the HT/surround speakers, at least it won't affect the music system as much. (The HT part of the system doesn't require as much nuance.)

While i hate to be the bearer of bad news, there are NO speaker cables made that will suit your needs and not result in signal degradation is some form. With that in mind, you need speaker cables that have the following traits:

1) Heavy gauge wire for lowest possible loss

2) Low inductance to maintain even tonal balance

3) Low capacitance to maintain amplifier stability

4) A design that offers some form of resistance to RFI

With that in mind, the first cables that come to mind are something configured in a "Star Quad" configuration. Using this configuration will minimize inductance to maintain high frequency response, keeps capacitance at a very reasonable level so that the amp doesn't oscillate, offers some form of RFI protection and gives you a heavy gauge conductor without going to a heavy, less flexible gauge of wire.

You can find reasonably priced cables of this design at www.partsexpress.com under part #100-768, 100-770 and 100-772. Parts quality is quite solid for the money as they use 99.9% pure copper. The overall design equates to appr 11 gauge total, so it is relatively heavy. To keep things flexible, this design uses four 14 gauge conductors with you using two conductors for each polarity.

I would look into a 500 ft spool ( 100-770 @ $165 ) and bi-wire the speakers if at all possible. This will result in 11 gauge for the low's and 11 gauge for the highs. This should offer better signal integrity / less chance for RFI due to the seperation of the frequencies. You'll also end up with a total of 8 gauge for each speaker, keeping series resistance ( line loss ) to a minimum. This configuration matches your criteria in terms of budget and my criteria in terms of maintaining signal integrity.

Parts Express also offers quite a bit of variety in terms of connectors, etc... I would HIGHLY suggest requesting a catalogue from their website.

If you want to spend more money and go with "hi-fi" brands, you can also do a search for Canare cables on the Markertek website. Hope this helps. Gotta run.... Sean
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There are some long runs of MIT Terminator 2 last time I looked at AudioAdvisor.com as well as some of the other of the Terminator series (3, 4, etc). These are last years models selling at 50% of MSRP. Good value. If you go with standard speaker wire (like monster), use 12 AWG or lower (ie, 10 AWG) for long runs.

Check out BetterCables.com. They make excellent custom-length runs. I have several of their 4-meter cables for my subwoofer, and also their component video cable, and I am very impressed with the build quality and performance. Here's their Web site: www.bettercables.com